As many of us already know, Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is not an analytics update. It’s a completely new Analytics product. And along with implementing a new Analytics product comes the inevitable learning curve of not only figuring out how to set it up, but also getting familiar with the new user interface, finding and pulling reports, and analyzing the most important data.
Although Universal Analytics (UA) won’t be finished until July 2023, advertisers should get ahead of the curve and set up GA4 as soon as possible. The sooner you bite the bullet and switch to GA4, the better set you are for the future and the sooner you can start acting on relevant customer insights.
Following the advice of Russel Ketchum, Director of Analytics at Google, and Steve Ganem, Product Director of the Google Analytics Group, the successful implementation of GA4, while time-consuming, can be broken down into a few steps.
Account structure
Companies should start by structuring their GA4 properties and accounts to meet their business needs.
“ Familiarize yourself with the key concepts of accounts, properties and data flows it will help inform the right structure for the business. It is essential that customers take their time with this piece to ensure that their entire organization is getting the most out of the product,” says Ganem.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=videoseries
Setup wizard
Businesses should then engage with the Setup Wizard, where they can save time by configuring a GA4 property to measure a site or app that already uses Universal Analytics with the Setup Wizard.
“Marketers looking for a guided setup experience in Google Analytics 4 should use setup wizard. This includes tools to automate some necessary steps and help you track progress. For example, these tools allow you to select the targets you want to import into GA4, copy Google Ads links that are currently in use, and add users who have access to your current property.” – Ganem
Analytics tag
Businesses and advertisers should add the Google tag to their sites to start collecting data. We encourage businesses to explore how they can use the Google Tag to start seeing data in their GA4 properties. It’s important to note that if businesses were using the global website tag, they are now using the Google tag and nothing else needs to be done.
“Structured data collection is the foundation of a measurement strategy that allows companies to understand the effectiveness of their campaigns and marketing efforts. With the Google tag, we’ve made this piece even easier to implement puzzle review”. – We win
Link to Google Ads
Google Ads import links from your existing Universal Analytics to the new GA4 property is essential to start seeing Google Ads data in your GA4 reports. Once this is complete, businesses should take action in their Google Ads account to start using GA4 data in their campaigns.
“Insights are only as good as the actions a business or advertiser can take from them. That’s why Google Analytics 4 allows insights to be quickly applied to campaigns with Google Ads integration” – Win
Custom events
Custom events allow companies to complete their measurement by assigning custom events from Universal Analytics to GA4.
“Google Analytics 4 was built on a completely new and more robust event-based data model. In Universal Analytics, pageviews and sessions were very important because that’s really all there was. In Google Analytics 4, these are just two of the dozens of events that can be collected automatically, and that doesn’t even take into account the vast number of events that clients can instrument themselves.This means that the way a user interacts with a site can be measured natively: by measuring things like purchases, scrolls, button clicks, external links, form submissions, video plays, etc. an inference made about what “must be happening” in a long session. This event model, along with smarter handling of users across the product, are some of the key ways we are equipping our customers to succeed in the future world.” – Ketchum
Track custom events in GA4
Goals and conversions
To better understand how websites and apps are performing, businesses should import Universal Analytics goals into GA4.
“Most websites and apps are designed with the goal of getting users to take some important action. For some, that might be creating a new account, for others it might be making a purchase or simply submitting a form of interest. Any action you want customers to take on your website or app should be represented as a conversion event in GA4. Doing so opens up key marketing features such as the ability to understand which campaigns are delivering the best results for your business.” – We win
Here’s a great video showing you how to migrate events and goals from UA to GA4
tender
To improve bid optimization, validate and bid Conversions from GA4 to Google Ads.
“Conversion events that a business collects from their website or app can improve the performance of their ad campaigns. By linking to Google Ads and importing your conversions, you can provide important feedback to your campaigns that automatically improve your performance when automated bidding is enabled.” – We win
audiences
To get the most out of GA4, advertisers and marketers need to create relevant audiences in Google Analytics 4 and activate them where they are most useful. Learn about predictive audiences available in GA4.
“GA4’s Audience Builder is the most powerful audience system we’ve ever built in Google Analytics, because it allows businesses to express almost any criteria they can think of in a simple and intuitive user interface. The audiences you define are pre-populated based on the last 30 days of data and evaluated on an ongoing basis, and can be used for a variety of purposes, including generating reporting insights, online advertising, and sending more meaningful push notifications. – We win
Create audiences based on buyers, subscribers and more
Electronic commerce
For companies that sell products online, they should configure eCommerce in GA4 properties to ensure they use names and parameters that provide the most useful eCommerce reports.
“Simply by following our best practices for e-commerce data collection, businesses will gain a complete view of shopping cart activity and benefit from powerful ML-based features such as Likelihood of purchase and expected income.” – We win
users
Finally, copy the Universal Analytics property users to the GA4 property manually or via the automated tool.
“For many companies, it’s important to strictly control access to sensitive financial information. That’s why we added configurations in GA4 to allow customers to control access to cost and revenue data on a user-by-user basis.” – We win
Reports and analysis
Now that GA4 is set up, it’s time to start familiarizing yourself with the navigation, the standard reports available, and learn how to customize your reports in whole new ways based on what’s important to your business.
“While we’ve given customers a great default reporting experience in GA4, we’ve designed the product to be fully customizable so businesses of all shapes and sizes can tailor it to their specific needs. They can use ours report creator to create reports that visualize virtually any combination of dimensions and metrics available in the product, and even assign filters to them so that teams in different regions or different business units can get the most information with the least effort.” – We win
For companies looking for more ways to better understand GA4 and some of the key concepts mentioned above, the GA4 Academy and Skillshop is a useful resource.
“When it comes to migration, long periods of overlapping data and an extended state in a dual UA / GA4 state will set customers up for success. It will allow them to not only compare data in the future, but also feel comfortable with the new platform and understand its differences. That’s why we continue to stress the importance of getting started as soon as possible.” – Ketchum
Check out these articles on how to create GA4 reports:
Final thoughts
In a statement to Search Engine Land, Ketchum says, “We recognize that change is difficult and that making the move takes effort and time, but to create a platform that is resilient to the evolving privacy landscape and helps customers measure effectively respecting users. privacy, more than an update was needed. GA4 is the analytics solution of the future for a reason: it was built that way. We hope these steps and tips help ease the process and help businesses understand the most essential pieces to start with GA4”.
New in Search Engine Land
About the author
Nicole Farley is an editor at Search Engine Land covering all things PPC. In addition to being a Marine Corps veteran, she has extensive experience in digital marketing, an MBA, and a penchant for true crime, podcasts, travel, and snacks.
[ad_2]
Source link
